Thought of The Day: Pick Four Things to Do and Save The Rest For Later

We’re overstimulated in too many ways, and I’m not talking about the “good” stimulation either. No I’m talking about techno-stress, e-clutter, and not having enough time in our day because our days are being burned up by too many emails, phone calls, social media posts, and meetings. We’re overwhelmed, overworked, underpaid, overtaxed, overspent, and many of us are burned out and waiting to be swept up by the city street sweeper.

Our to-do lists keep getting longer and longer, and we find ourselves transferring today’s to-dos over to tomorrow because “I ran out of time” or “something came up and I ran out of time“. Do you see how “time” keeps popping up to blindside us. We never get more minutes in the day, but we can find better ways to make the most of the twenty-four hours that we all have.

So here’s a game plan to consider:

Take your 24-item to-do list and let’s try knocking it down to no more than four major tasks per day. Painting your nails or removing your chest hair doesn’t count as a major task. Let those factor in after you complete the four major tasks.

Now let’s look at how that calculates. Four major tasks per day, for 6 days, means you have completed 24 tasks in one week. They are the exact same tasks that you tried to relegate to one day, but now you can actually accomplish them rather than transferring them over to the next day and the next day, and next week.

Here’s how you can limit the probability of unintentionally increasing your daily to-do list: learn to say “no” to people. If their request isn’t life-altering, then say “no“, delegate it to someone else, or if you just feel pressed to do it, swap it for one of your other four tasks. But whatever you do, don’t increase your list.

What do you need to focus on this week? Get to work and don’t forget…pace yourself!